The DecLie Complex
by GoldStarGrl
Summary: Everyone has their secrets. Especially Howard, Leonard, Raj, Amy, Bernadette, Penny and yes, even Sheldon. Ten secrets the each keep.
1. Howard

The Dec-Lie Complex

Howard

1. He doesn't lack a Ph.D. by choice.

His father walked out on him when he was eleven, leaving Mrs. Wolowitz to raise a sixth grader on a part time cashier's salary. From middle school until he turned seventeen, Mrs. Wolowitz saved every penny she made for Howard and his education. She was determined he wouldn't be a loser like his Pop. Howard understood her sacrifice, and worked even harder to make sure it was worth it. He studied every night for hours, pulled straight As, got every scholarship that was available. He started working two jobs as soon as he turned fifteen. All he did for those seven years was study and work.  
>But even with both of them trying as hard as they could, there just wasn't enough money for everything they needed, let alone wanted. When Howard graduated with his masters-He also graduated with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. He wanted to earn a Ph.D, but he knew he and his Ma just couldn't swing another four years of school.<br>He tells his Ma most engineers don't get .  
>He couldn't handle making her feel guilty.<p>

2. He HATES that he doesn't have a Ph.D.

He always laughs along with his friends, but really, the teasing gets to him. It gives him flash backs of being bullied in middle school for not being tall enough, athletic enough, or cool enough. One night Sheldon pushed him so hard he actually went home and cried.  
>Apparently he wasn't smart enough either.<p>

3. Bernadette was his first real girlfriend.

He'd hooked up with a couple of girls in college, and had his friends with benefits deal with Leslie Winkle, but Bernadette is the only girl he's ever been able to really hang onto. One who'll sleep with him regularly, who'll lie on his roof with him while he points out constellations, and the only one who continued to say 'Yes'.

4. He's Bisexual.  
>He figured that out when he was in high school and couldn't stop staring at the captain of the soccer team's as; the BOYS soccer team. He's still into the ladies...QUITE a bit, but he knows he overdoes it sometimes. It's only so his friends won't notice that he was drooling over Shia Lebeuf instead of Megan Fox during their Transformers marathon.<br>What did Dr. Hofstader call it? Classic Overcompensation?  
>He laughed her off, but he knew she was right. The Hofstaders had always been pretty damn smart.<br>  
>5. He starts to speak a new language every time Raj can't.<br>  
>He loves Raj more than life itself, and it breaks his heart to see him struggle to open his mouth and do what comes so easily to all his friends; talk.<br>When Dr. Gabelhouse first introduced him to Raj, Raj didn't only clam up around girls: He wouldn't talk to ANYONE. Every day at lunch he'd sit alone and look down at his lap when approached. Howard had assumed he didn't speak English.  
>Once and awhile, he caught sight of Raj's sparkling, beautiful brown eyes. They made Howard's stomach explode and twist up all at once.<br>And that was enough to make him decide to help out Rajesh Koothrapalli.  
>He stayed up all that night learning and memorizing Hindi phrases. He ran up to Raj in the cafeteria the next day and said breathlessly;<br>"āpse milkar bahut khushi huī. Mera nām Howard hai. App phit milan Gae."  
>To which Raj furrowed his eyebrows and whispered softly.<br>"You speak Hindi?"  
>Howard dropped his lunch tray in outrage, squeaking something along the lines of "You speak ENGLISH? Are you fucking KIDDING me?"<br>Raj had bitten his lip and looked down, nervously.  
>"I'm sorry." He squeaked. "I-I don't know why you're angry-"<br>Howard was about to launch into a tirade about how much time he'd spent trying to learn Hindi just so he could make friends with this-this boy-  
>Who had the most beautiful brown eyes.<br>Eyes that were currently filled with fearful tears.  
>Howard felt any annoyance drain from his body as he realized this.<br>He bit his lip guiltily and stuck out a hand.  
>"I...I'm sorry. I-I'm just surprised. Can we start over? As friends?" He asked shyly.<br>Raj looked at him nervously. He slowly raised his own hand to shake Howard's.  
>"Hello." He whispered. "It was very nice of you to learn Hindi." He gave a tiny smile at that. Howard's stomach plunged at the sight of it.<br>He spent the following two weeks studying Hindi every night. By the next year he was fluent.  
>Whenever Raj gets upset or ashamed or frustrated because of his shyness, Howard cracks open a dictionary and starts learning a new language.<br>He tells himself it's to balance things out, and that it's his responsibility to speak because Raj can't.  
>But really, he just knows Farsi and Russian and Sign Language because of the way Raj smiles when he starts speaking.<br>He'll do anything for that smile.  
><span><br>6. He's terrified of the dark.  
><span>  
>Not just scared or annoyed by it, but legitimately terrified. He feels like the darkness is crushing him, swallowing him whole.<br>Once the power went out when he was at work and he had a panic attack. His two colleagues were nonplussed by the crying, hyperventilating, terror fit that sparked out of nowhere.  
>When the lights came back on, he wiped his eyes and told them it was an epileptic episode. They pretended to believe him. That night, he put in two new lightsaber lamps over his bed.<span><span>

7. He didn't lose his virginity to his cousin Jeanne.

He tells everyone he did because the ridicule is less severe than what would he' go through if he told them the truth.  
>That it was with a boy named Jacob in a camp shower when he was seventeen.<br>Like the stereotypes suggest, Howard spent all his summers growing up at a local 'Jew Camp'. It was free, so his mother was able to send him there. He and Jason were the last one showering after a particularly exhausting nature hike. Howard was rubbing his sore ankles when he felt a larger, warm hand cup around his own. He looked up to see Jason hunched over him, his hot breath tickling Howard's neck.  
>"You look exhausted Howie." Jason whispered, running a hand up Howard's leg. His small, dark eyes were full of lust. Howard let out a tiny gasp as Jason leaned forward and kissed him. Howard's stomach started tingling as he himself deepened the kiss, jumping up and wrapping his sudsy legs around Jason's sturdy, stocky body...<br>It's been nine years since that day, and Howard has denied it's existence for every one.  
>Although it's gotten harder since he met Leonard.<br>The day he met short, dark eyed Leonard, he almost passed out; He was a splitting image of Jason Rosenthal.  
>Sometimes he thinks the universe likes to test him.<p>

beat Sheldon at a game of chess once.

Sheldon attributes it to the fact he was tired and had a cold and wasn't really trying. Regardless, Howard has the pride of knowing that, even if just for a minute, he was smarter  
>than Dr. Sheldon Cooper.<br>He wouldn't trade that for all the brisket in the world.

9. He goes to temple almost every Saturday.

He jokes about being a bad Jew, but he drives down to his favorite, quiet little temple in Hollywood as often as he can. The praying, the silence, the long beautiful Hebrew blessings are what keeps him sane. At Temple, he's not obnoxious or creepy or stupid or clumsy. He's just Howard. And he loves it. 

10. He looks just like his father did when he was twenty six.

And that scares the living hell out of him.


	2. Leonard

1. He loves to garden.

In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that it would give his mother a coronary, Leonard almost went into the study of Botany. He has a few little window boxes full of Zinnas and Roses in the apartment that he loves taking care of. There's something soothing, almost primitive about the smell of dirt and plants. Almost like a new beginning. And Leonard's wanted one of those for twenty nine years.

2. He wants nothing more in life than to be taller.

It's not just the teasing and Hobbit jokes; It's the pure inconvenience. He has a specially made refrigerator just because he can't reach the top of a regular one. Not to mention, being 5' flat makes him feel like he's forever thirteen. And that is not something he wants to deal with.

3. He's always been weirdly attracted to Bernadette.

He knows it's wrong, and that it's his friend's fiancé, but...damn, what an...ample bosom. Plus, she was the only one that didn't make fun of his short refrigerator.

4. He can't believe someone like Penny would ever want to be with someone like him.

Sure it happened in movies and teen romance novels, but in real life, the cheerleader marries the football star and the nerd marries the president of the Women of Science club.

Part of him is always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

5. He's not lactose intolerant.

He just really, really hates milk. His family drank loads of it when he was growing up, and absolutely nothing else. He got so sick of it the thought of milk gives him anxiety attacks. He didn't try a juice box until he was nineteen. And he knew a medical reason was the only reason Sheldon would stop trying to force it down his throat.

6. Every time his mother visits, he wets the bed.

It's absolutely mortifying, and he's sure there's some physiological, reverting-to-past-experiences reason for it. But that's not what he cares about when he had to explain to Penny why his sheets were soaking wet every night that Beverly Hofstader came to town. She suggested he buy some sort of adult diaper. Leonard recalled thinking he'd be the first proven case that someone had actually died of embarrassment.

7. He's fluent in Mandarin Chinese

He learned the summer he was twenty one. He just likes to see Sheldon suffer when he tries to order dinner from the Golden Palace.

8. He can't swim.

That's the real reason he didn't want to the beach with Penny. When other kids were taking swimming lessons at the local pool, he was locked up in his room studying the periodic table. By the time he turned eighteen, he felt like it was too late to learn. His parents always said not to attempt something unless one knew they could succeed.

9. Sometimes, when no one else is home, he turns on the Les Mis soundtrack and sings the entire score at the top of his lungs.

10. He's incredibly jealous of Sheldon Cooper.

It's not the brains and control Sheldon has, but something a little more human. Sheldon had never taken crap from anyone. He had done whatever he wanted in life. When it came down to it, Leonard craved to bridge the one thing that made them different.

Sheldon was who he was because of millions of things; his brain, his appearance, his personality…his own choices.

Leonard was who he was because he had had to be.

And no number of hugging machines was ever going to fix that.


	3. Raj

Raj

1. He loves Broadway Musicals.

He didn't hear American music until he was twelve. His father arranged a screening of Annie for Raj, Priya and their little brother Raghu in the television room.

Raghu got bored within the first ten minutes, and Priya claimed she couldn't understand anyone's accent, but Raj was entranced. He sat gaping in wonderment at the lavish sets and huge, complex dance numbers. He watched it four times in a row before running into his Dad's study and begging for more "American songs and dancers." Dr. Koothrapalli, abiet hesitantly, sent the servants out to find Grease, Gypsy and Fiddler On The Roof for his oldest son. Raj adds a new DVD to his collection every year.

2. He almost failed 1st grade.

Even the private school in Mumbai wasn't very clean or well equipped. Raj was so shy and scared of everyone his teachers assumed he was stupid, that there was something wrong with him. The other kids and even the teachers taunted him on the playground.

_"Pagal hai!_" They yelled, pushing him down the school's front stairs. "Stupid boy!"

It got so bad Raj stopped doing his home work and paying attention in school. He almost started to believe them.

Almost.

3. He's broken every bone in his body.

Raj was an antsy child. Constantly running, skipping, dancing, jumping and twirling. What he couldn't make himself say with his words, he's say with movement. Unfortunately, that meant he was constantly pitching himself over walls and climbing up stair railings. Over time, he's snapped, crushed, twisted and fractured every bone in from his nose to his ribs.

4. He's allergic to almost everything.

Cats, wheat, strawberries, you name it, it makes Raj throw up. His friends have no idea how many pills he takes just to go out to dinner with them. But after seeing all the mocking Leonard goes through, he keeps his mouth shut.

5. He hates himself sometimes.

After a long day spent with Penny or some female lab worker, Raj just sits on his couch and cries. He wishes more than anything he could just be normal like Howard and Leonard. How they could hold a goddamn conversation without becoming a drunken douche bag. He hates that he can't just act like a normal person.

6. Whenever he gets sad, he looks at Pluto.

No matter how cold it is, Raj'll take his telescope up to the roof of his building. He'll set it up, aim it, and stare up at the little dot 60 trillion miles away. There's something soothing about knowing he's not the smallest, most isolated thing in the universe.

7. His parents thought he was deaf.

Raj didn't speak until he was almost four years old. Not to mention, he couldn't talk to anyone outside his family until his late teens. And that was only the delivery men. Time and time again, the Koothrapallis had Raj's hearing checked. Time and time again the doctors told them Raj was just a Pagal hai.

It killed them almost as much as it did Raj.

8. He misses India.

He loves his friends and his job, but he's always a bit homesick. Not for all the doctors and bullies who made him so sad, but for the noise and family and culture he secretly likes. Pasadena is no where near as warm as home.

9. He's constantly scared his friends will turn on him.

He never had any friends growing up. He didn't make any until he started working at CalTech, when he was twenty two years old. He can't believe Howard, Leonard, Sheldon, Penny, Bernadette and Amy actually want to hang out with him.

He's can't help waiting for it all to be some cruel trick pulled by the popular kids.

10. He's been in love with Howard Wolowitz for three and a half years.

Everyday is one day closer to Howard and Bernadette's wedding.

And everyday Raj's heart breaks a little more.


	4. Penny

Penny

1. She dressed up as a boy for three months.

When she was ten, Penny was so sick and frustrated with her father's lack of love for her she'd do anything to get it. So, one morning, she wrapped an ace bandage around her breasts, stole boy pants and a sweatshirt from her next door neighbor, and hacked off all her beautiful blonde hair. She stumbled downstairs and asked to be referred to as David.

Her mother was horrified.

But Penny only had eyes for her father.

It didn't change anything.

She still wasn't what he wanted.

It was only when her mother announced she was having a real boy that Penny went back to being Penny.

But she wished she didn't.

Because David was still loved more than she was.

2. She won the Nebraska State Spelling Bee four years in a row.

Spelling was the one part of school that came easily to her. The letters, the sounds, they all just clicked in her head. She won from third grade right up until her thirteenth birthday.

That's when her older cousin Maggie told her only dorks were in spelling bees, and only the biggest geeks won them.

So Penny held back the sounds, the letters and words.

Penny dumbed herself down.

When Leonard challenged her to spell 'asthma', a small part of her was desperate to say,

"A-S-T-H-M-A. It's often confused with a similar disease, Bronchiectasis. B-R-O-N-C-H-I-E-C-T-A-S-I-S."

But a bigger part told her to hold her tongue.

Sometimes Penny really hates that part.

3. One night, she caught herself checking out Sheldon's ass.

It was his own damn fault for owning plaid pants that tight. Not to mention, it was dark and she had drunken, like, four glasses of wine and...can this, like, not be talked about?

4. She was pregnant once.

It was only six or seven weeks along before she lost it, but it was there. There was a tiny person inside Penny. She cried and screamed as she threw up constantly and obsessively checked for signs of showing. She was panicked and estatic and horrified all at once. For almost two months, she was symoltainiously cursing God and looking up baby names.

Until the day a costumer gasped and Penny looked down to see great streaks of blood running down her legs.

She dropped her tray and ran out of the restaurant, sobbing. She ran almost two miles before she fell at the side of the road and and just sat there, staring at all the caked blood on her skirt and legs.

She called Amy to come pick her up. Amy handed her tissues and pretended not to notice Penny's bloody hands gripping her stomach.

She drank an entire bottle of wine that night, toasting the child that never was. The child that, even though she was young and poor and stupid, could have made her life...important.

She never told Leonard he was going to be a dad.

5. She has night terrors.

They've gotten less frequent since she left Nebraska, but every once and a while they'll hit. She'll wake up at two in the morning screaming her head off, hands shaking, and her heart about to give out. The first few times, she just sat in her apartment quivering until the sun came up. But the forth time she started yelling and thrashing at nothing, there was a pounding at the door, followed by Sheldon running in and standing over the bed.

"Penny. Penny. Penny. Wake up." He whispered flatly. He stroked her hair until her breathing returned to normal. "There, there." He said stoutly, and then slipped back out the door.

He does this every time an attack hits.

They never talk about it.

6. The thought of going back to Nebraska makes her feel physically sick.

7. She considers the day she booked that first commercial the happiest of her life.

That night, Leonard and Sheldon came over and they all toasted champagne (and Yoo-Hoo) and Penny couldn't stop smiling and for once she knew what it was like to be special.

8. Her full name is Penelope Anastasia St. Fleur.

She's not kidding. She can't believe she's skated by with "I'm... 'Penny'" for five years without one of the guys having called her on it. She fears the mockery when they do.

9. She can't believe someone like Leonard would ever want to be with someone like her.

He's so smart and handsome and accomplished, and she's just...Penny. She can't shake the feeling he's looking down on her, that the cheerleader won't sustain the nerd forever.

10. She's terrified for the day her looks are gone.

Penny isn't a college graduate, a successful actress or even a really nice person.

She knows her greatest asset is that she's pretty.

But she also knows she's not going to be twenty two forever, and one day, she'll get old.

And those boys across the hall...those sweet, damaged boys...will finally see her for what she is. A nothing.

And that door will be closed forever.


	5. Bernadette

Bernadette

1. She's the result of a teen pregnancy.

For someone who was so immersed in church, Victoria Rostenkowski had no qualms about pre-marital sex. The tiny town she grew up in was both fascinated and horrified by the fourteen-year-old mother, covering her huge stomach with Grateful Dead tee-shirts and chain-smoking on the corner. When Bernadette was born, her father Rodney, who was only sixteen, ran off. Bernie didn't see him again until she was ten. And she never stopped getting called "Vicky's bastard child."

2. She's an excellent shot.

The first outing she had with her estranged father, he took her to a shooting range. She was still so confused and angry with him, she pretended that the clay pigeons she pointed her gun at were Rodney's stupid face.

She hit every single one.

Every once and awhile he'd bring her back, and every time she'd take her aggression out on the targets. And she had a lot of it. By the time she was in high school she was like fucking Bonnie and Clyde.

3. She was engaged once before Howard.

She had been fifteen and a sweet boy named James from her high school proposed. They had been dating for two years. She had accepted. Where they grew up, it was normal to see people married off young. "Especially a Rostenkowski!" everyone joked.

For months her family planned the wedding and James' family helped where ever they could. Everyone was ecstatic that dorky little Bernie had found a man.

But a month before the wedding, she had been washing her face before bed, and just stood there staring at herself.

She looked like her mother.

She was going to be a teen mom, stuck in this hick town forever, just like her mother.

Bernadette ripped the ring off her finger and threw it down the toilet.

She ran off to the nearest motel that night, and didn't come home for weeks. She wrote everyone letters, calling the wedding off.

She could NOT be like her mother.

4. She skipped two grades.

She went from Kindergarten to second grade, and than seventh grade to a freshman in high school. Unlike Sheldon, she doesn't see it as something to brag about. She was just bored in her classes, so they gave her more interesting ones. Simple as that. Not to mention, she feels like talking about would make Howard or Penny feel bad.

5. She may or may not have committed a crime last month.

Amy was off with Sheldon and Howard was visiting his grandmother, so Penny and Bernadette went to Penny's apartment and had a girl's night. It started off innocently, watching The Notebook and drinking some wine. And then they drank a little more. And more. And even more.

The last thing Bernadette remembers is running down a dark Pasadena street holding a mysterious backpack as sirens blared behind her.

Penny has no recollection of the night. Bernadette hopes the purple glitter that keeps turning up all over her best friend's apartment won't start any questions she can't answer.

6. She was brought to a Nazi rallies all through preschool.

When she was three, her mother, who was just seventeen, had started dating a man in his thirties named Hank.

Hank was a large, solidly built man with blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. He looked so much like Vicky and Bernie that he was often mistaken for her father. He was kind to them, but never wanted to talk to anyone outside the family or his exclusive group of friends.

One day, Hank and Vicky put Bernie in her car seat. Hank announced they were going to a party with a few of his friends. Only there were way more than a few. And everyone was chanting and waving red flags with spiky spirals all over them.

It was loud and scary and Bernadette hated them, but Vicky and Hank took her to them once a month for the year and a half they dated.

Until Bernadette said the N-word at dinner one night.

Her grandmother flipped out, and once finding out where Vicky had been going, sent her to her room to read bible verses about loving others. Hank never came by again, but Vicky still isn't on board with Bernadette marrying Howard, or 'The Jew' as she refers to him as.

Bernadette hates her for it.

7. Sometimes she wonders who she'd be if her mother hadn't been such a fuck up.

8. She sings like a rock star.

She had been over Leonard and Sheldon's for dinner and was helping Leonard and Penny clean up the dishes. Out of nowhere, Penny started to sing "Don't Rain On My Parade" softly to herself. Leonard joined in, sounding a little frightening, so Bernadette did too, thinking she couldn't possibly be worse than him.

"I'll march my band out, I'll beat my drum! And if I stand ou..."

She faded off, seeing her friends staring at her in absolute shock. Her face flushed.

"Sorry, was that awful?"

Penny, looking dumbstruck, shook her head slowly. "Not at all."

"Yeah, that was actually really good." Leonard said bemusedly. "I didn't know you had it in you."

"Oh. Thank you." She squeaked out.

Neither did she.

9. She secretly likes being the smartest women at work.

Most of the waitresses are like Penny, struggling actress from TinyTown, Utah, with big, unrealistic dreams. When she tells them she's getting a Ph.D in microbiology, they treat her like Einstein.

10. It really hurts her feelings when everyone makes fun of Howard.

She gets it. He's skinny and geeky and likes to solves Chinese algorithms in his spare time, but she loves him. And she's sick of having to justify it. The next time someone insults her Howie, she'll snipe them with the '45 Rodney got her for her sixteenth birthday.


	6. Amy

1. She has been diagnosed with six different social disorders.

Since she was seven years old, Mrs. Fowler had carted Amy from specialist to specialist, desperate for someone to tell her why Amy wasn't making friends. Why she took everything people said literally and often blurted out lesbianic comments about girls in her class she labeled her "bestie".

Every time, Mrs. Fowler would burst into tears in the examination room.

"I just want someone to fix her!" She'd wail.

Every time, a doctor would just pat her hand comfortingly, and write a prescription for another pill.

By high school, Amy was on nine different medications.

None of them did a bit of good.

But it made her mother feel better.

2. For the week after Sheldon got her the tiara, she demanded he call her Princess Amelia for, like, two weeks.

And he did.

3. She's had sex.

Not a simulation like she described to Sheldon, but real, honest-to-God coitus. It was when she was an undergraduate at Yale. The boy was named Peter, and they did it behind the scenery for one of Yale's famous drama department's plays. It lasted twenty nine seconds and he announced he was gay shortly after, but it still counts.

4. She hates Star Wars.

She tried to get into it, because all her new friends liked it, but she just didn't see the point. Why was the princess making out with her brother if she KNEW he was her brother? How come the bear thing didn't get a metal when everyone else did? And what in blazes WAS that weird bear thing?

Madness.

5. She speaks nine languages.

It wasn't like there was much else to do during high school. She finished her schoolwork weeks before anyone else, and having no friends freed up her schedule to learn even more. Although she might have overdone it a little. Sometimes she and Howard have awkward conversations about Raj's obvious homosexuality in Farsi. She enjoys it very much.

6. She likes to make apple butter when she's stressed out.

She has no idea why. It must be the smell.

7. She wishes Sheldon would be a little more flexible.

She likes her boyfriend a lot, but just once, she'd like to hug him or go out for pizza on Thai Night without him having a panic attack. Sometimes she thinks it would be nice to date a normal person once and awhile.

She feels awful when she does.

8. She really did like kissing Penny.

Maybe it was just the alcohol talking, but her stomach was unnaturally fluttery for an hour after she pecked her best friend on the lips. It was probably because she smelled like apple butter.

9. She hates that her mother can't just let her be.

As soon as she graduated high school, she thought she could get away from the constant barrage of, "Amelia, did you take all your pills?" "Amelia, who is that girl? Are you friends? What's her name? Does she want to come in?"

"Amelia, why don't you have a boyfriend yet?"

But to this day, Mrs. Fowler calls Amy constantly, questioning and suggesting and trying to set her up on dates with bag boys at the grocery back in Minnesota.

Always trying to fix her.

But Amy doesn't want to be fixed.

That's why she hasn't taken her medicine since she was eighteen.

10. She wants to kiss Sheldon Cooper way more than he'll ever want to kiss her.

And that kills her more than she'd like to admit.


	7. Sheldon

**1. He didn't just watch football, he played it.**

He hated it and called it chauvinistic and boring, but he was from Texas. And when you are eight years old in Texas, your gym teacher is also the head of the town football association and practically forces every boy in the class to sign up at gunpoint.

Sheldon lasted exactly nine and a half games. Halfway through the tenth, he accidentally drank from another player's water bottle and had to be rushed home to scrub his mouth out with laundry detergent.

**2. He has dyslexia.**

It frustrates him to no end. His IQ rivals Einstein's and he still has trouble reading the names on his cereal boxes. Sometimes, when it's particularly bad, he demands Leonard type his papers. Leonard questions it, but Sheldon just can't let himself slip up. Can't let anyone see he's not perfect. That's why he likes talking, he supposes. A way to garentee your words and letters come out in the right order.

**3. He loves disco music.**

Maybe it's because he grew up in the early 80s. Maybe it's because he used to watch the Brady Bunch with Missy every Tuesday afternoon. So many hypothesis...

**4. Kissing Amy was, maybe, possibly, something there was a slight chance of him wanting to do again.**

**5. He only speaks English.**

It's a travasty that he, the most brilliant of all his friends, can't grasp a single language besides his own native tongue. Especially when Howard and Amy are like walking Google Translates. Howard mused that Sheldon might just be so extremely left brained languages are impossible for him to comprehend, but Sheldon tries to ignore him. He doesn't even have a Ph.D.

**6. He prays.**

He knows he makes many convincing cases against God and St. Peter's Baptist Church back home. He openly scoffs at his mother's "Jesus-Mania", but every once and awhile, he'll just sit in bed, hands clasped, and ask advice from someone he can't see. It's insanity, he knows. But he takes solace in the fact the brilliant scientists are often a little loopy.

**7. When he was twelve years old, he was in an a capella group.**

It was his second year at Harvard and he had been practicing his throat singing while he walked down a deserted hallway. Or a hallway he presumed was deserted. A young man of about nineteen or twenty stuck his head out of a classroom at the loud, wobbly notes bouncing off the walls in alarm.

After Sheldon assured him he wasn't having some sort of satanic fit, the man, named Elliott, cautiously asked if he could sing Tenor. Sheldon, of course, could. As a result, he was the youngest member of Pitch-Slapped. Elliott and the five other boys in the group were thrilled to have someone who's voice was still high and clear, not yet mangled by puberty. Sheldon enjoyed the attention very much, but he also loved singing. It's a passion he's never gotten over, despite Leonard's repeated pleas to do so. He's just jealous, _he_ sounds like a strangled cat when he sings.

**8. He tried to kill himself when he was seven.**

The bullies at school were just too much. He couldn't take one step across the second grade classroom without someone tripping him and sending him crashing to the ground. Jake Bensworth stole his homework for three weeks straight. Even Sheldon couldn't redo it fast enough for credit. And he got mugged of his belongings so often, he hadn't eaten lunch since kindergarten.

So one day, he and Missy came home from school. She went to go watch _Cheers_ with their older brother, and Sheldon took ten Nyquil pills out of his mother's medicine cabinet. He crept upstairs and barricaded himself in the bathroom with the wastebasket.

He had just gotten the third pill down when the door burst open, sending the wastebasket skidding into the tub.

Mary Cooper ran in, yelling for Sheldon. She had broken her hand (Or rather, George Cooper had.) And needed Sheldon medical kit.

Sheldon dropped the seven remaining pills down the toilet and sleepily showed it to her. He callosped on his bed and slept for sixteen hours, but he lived. The pain didn't go away, but that's another story.

**9. He loves Leonard more than his mother and his spot put together.**

Now, not the violent, loud, physical love Leonard seemed to enjoy with Penny. Just as someone loves someone who has stood by him through thick and thin. Someone who reads him _A Brief History of Time_ when he can't sleep, even if it's four in the morning, or washes his feet before taking showers and signs three hundred and ninety four page roommate agreements just so Sheldon will be a little less anxious. That kind of love.

Also, he has an aesthetically pleasing smile.

But Sheldon would rather be impaled with the Sword of Azeron than tell him that.

**10. He knows he's not as great as he's always saying**

Brilliant, Successful, Excellent, Superior... All just big, fancy words he throws around to describe himself. He knows it irritates his friends, but it's all in the name of science.

The experiment he's been working on for nearly thirty years. The hypothesis is simple.

If Dr. Cooper repeats these compliments enough times, then he might... actually start to believe them.

It's been unsuccessful so far.

But Dr. Cooper has never been one to give up on science.


End file.
